Infected

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It's the end of the world as we know it ... should you feel fine?

By Nix

We at IGN, and everybody else out there in the gaming news biz, have already given ups to developer Planet Moon Studios for having gigantic balls. These guys are a known entity for Giants: Citizen Kabuto and previously Shiny's MDK, and they bailed on the console rat-race to embrace the PlayStation Portable. Sure, there are developers who are "handheld guys", but not many are that way by choice, and even though the PSP (and its rival Nintendo DS system) is a handheld on a much higher order than anything from the past, making pocket games is still a gig looked down upon in the industry.

That being said, even big brass ones only get you so far, and then you've got to deliver. PSP owners have been watching Infected, Planet Moon's first PSP game, for a while to see if it swings with all the weight of its maker's reputation. In a lot of ways, it does -- the sick-minded humor and blistering action is everything you'd expect from this team. However, Infected has a small-scale concept that intentionally limbos under the hype bar rather than vaults way over it. This is a zombie blast-a-thon, with no puzzles, few special moves, and only occasional story interjections. There's method to the madness, but you'll figure that out in the first hour of the game, and after that, it's all sweat and bullets until the end. If you're expecting production values and gameplay depth on par with a console game in this former console game studios' first handheld go, you might find that Infected's vein run dry. Get past expectations, though, and you've got a mainlined adrenaline rush with multiplayer modes that should keep you pumping.

Dead Day Afternoon

The chief conceit behind Infected is that zombies have overrun The Big Apple, and only you can stop them with your somehow immune blood cells. The idea breaks down the second you start up a multiplayer match, strangely enough, but again, this game isn't about story -- it's about making zombies bleed with your blood. To tenderize the zombies so that they're ready for an injection of healthy death, you've got a handful of choices in guns and explosives that can be upgraded as you go along. Load them up with bullets, then when they've gone red, pop them with a shot of blood. If a zombie is near enough to other zombies when he splats, his blood will help either lower the defenses of the zombies around or, better still, burst those ready to blow for a carnage combo.

It's a simple idea, with simple controls tied easily to the PSP's gamepad. Infected is a game that takes just seconds to pick up and play, but far from a lifetime to master. Outside of the two always-armed guns (one your Viral Gun for splatting creatures, the other your choice of firearm or explosive), there's a button for sprinting and a button for a 180-degree quick-turn. The rest of the gamepad is your map and gun choice, and that's it. The layout is efficient -- games have surely been less fun with twice as many controller inputs. No camera problems, and no need to curse the PSP's lack of a second analog pad. Still, there's not a lot of room for technique in the game control. It can take a heck of a lot of skill in a two-player bout just to keep matches from being a see-saw trade-off on the health bar (and even when you do play skillfully, you'll feel like a wuss for avoiding so many firefights), and single player feels like the same few match types over and over again.

The technique of the game comes in how you approach each map and how you take on the zombie hoards. The infected New Yorkers are fast, lethal, and hungry, and to beat them, you've got to use your brains before they get eaten. Infected will hunt the survivors, and one of your chief goals is to rescue citizens before they are attacked and become rabid. Every one of the game's 40 stages has some differences in this aspect. Some stages will have you collecting up people to have them evacuated by helicopter, while others have men on the field that cannot be choppered out and must be protected. Sometimes the evac zone must be cleared of zombies so that the helicopters can fly in safely, and other zones only allow limited passenger flights in to take a few people away at a time in each zone. One or two areas, at the hardest ranking level, don't even let you get the people out, and you've got to keep them safe while you lock down areas of the map to keep them protected.